Well, I just checkED Ulrich Luz`s commentary on Matthew. Yes his is is one of the best commentaries on Matthew. I read his commentary on Mt 1:25 and he showed us that we don`t have to worry about Eric svendsen study. Luz tell us that HEOS can mean as Svendsen says, that the situation AFTER heos has changed.
Luz gives us Mt 5:26 as example: 26"Truly I say to you, you will not come out of there HEOS, until you have paid up the last cent".
BUT LUZ TELLS US THAT HEOS (CONTRARY TO THE NORMAL ENGLISH AND SPANISH USAGE) CAN MEAN THAT THE SITUATION NEVER CHANGED OR WILL NEVER CHANGE.For example Mt 5:25 "Make friends quickly with your opponent at law HEOS, WHILE you are with him on the way, so that your opponent may not hand you over".
Obviously Jesus isn`t asking us that we become friends with our adversary only while we are on the way, but not after.
One more example Luz provides us is the famous promise of Jesus in the very last verse of the Gospel of Matthew:
"I am with you always, HEOS, EVEN to the end of the age." (Mt 28:20). This doesn`t mean that Jesus is not gonna be with us AFTER the end of the age. Mt 1:25 doesn`t have to have the helvidian sense that John Calvin rejected in His commentary or Mt 1:25.Eric Svendsen isn`t protestant, because Calvin, Luther and Zwingli the fathers of Protestantism taught that Mary is always a virgin. Yes Helvidius (at the time of Jerome IV- V century) taught the same thing as Svendsend.
Well I prefer to follow a more competent and less biased protestant exegete, a respected Matthew specialist as Ulrich Luz. Following the fundamentalist tradition Eric Svendsen didn`t write a commentary on the Holy Spirit`s inspired prophecy that Mary pronounced AND IT`S GOD`S WORD: "From now on all people will call me blessed". We like it or not a good sign that we follow the Holy Spirit is to imitate Elizabet example:
"When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the baby inside her jumped. And Elizabeth WAS FILLED WITH THE HOLY SPIRIT. In a LOUD VOICE SHE CALLED OUT: "God has blessed you more than other women. And blessed is the child you will have!. AND HOW HAS IT HAPPENED THAT THE MOTHER OF MY LORD WOULD COME TO ME" (Lk 1:41-43). No. Svendsen didn`t wrote a book about these verses of GOD`S WORD. Well, he is not Elizabet, he is a typical conservative protestant. Even Ulrich Zwingli, the influential swizs reformer loved Mary, even tough he was a catholic hater.
Blessed be God that Svendsen isn`t the only NT exegete who wrote about Mary. Compare his book with "Mary: Glimpses of the Mother of Jesus (Personality of the New Testament)by Beverly Roberts Gaventa, a NT exegete who wrote for the Anchor Bible Dictionary. Or read "Blessed One: Protestant Perspectives on Mary" by Beverly Roberts Gaventa (Editor), Cynthia L. Rigby (Editor).
Luz rocks. Mary mother of the believers (as the protestant NT exegete teaches in his "John: A Maverick Gospel"), pray for us before the Only one Mediator between God and men. Jesus. Read also Culpepper book on the Anatomy of the Fourth Gospel, where he says almost the same thing. He is also protestant. May Jesus bless us. My first language is spanish, Sorry for the errors,
Eric Svendsen has written a masterpiece. This is a brilliant book. Dr. Svendsen's entire thesis is based toward the diachronic fallacies. Roman Catholics like to go to the septuagint to find references to heos hou and adelphos that do not imply the necessity of the idea that Mary lost her virginity. Eric Svendsen demonstrates that there is vertually no warrant for doing so, and hence, there is no way Catholics can come up with a way around Matthew 1:25 and the texts about Jesus' brothers. To say that Robert Sungenis refutes this thesis is just simply silly. Robert Sungenis does not understand what diachronic fallacies are and he demonstrates this when he states on is able to go to the septuagint to establish the meaning, and makes some other absolutely embarrassing mistakes in his articles which Eric Svendsen has responded to on his website at http://www.ntrmin.org/rccorner.htm. John Pacheco does not even know Greek! In fact, if you look at the response given by him you will see that he consults scholars that either have nothing to do with the area under discussion or that have never had a chance to examine the evidence provided by Eric Svendsen. Just take a look at Eric's response to both of them at http://www.ntrmin.org/sungenis_and_heos_hou_3.htm.
Not only that, but the reviewer has to say that these Catholic scholars that agree with Dr. Svendsen have renounced their right to be called Catholic. First of all, the people who agree with him are the likes of Raymond Brown and Joseph Fitzmayer! These are people who have served on papal comissions. How someone who has served on a papal comission could not be a good Catholic I don't know. To further compound the problem, the reviewer has engaged in private interpretation. These people are still in good standing with Rome, and have never been censured, and hence, there is private interpretation going on when the reviewer rejects them. In fact, even Craig Bloomberg who is acknowleged on both sides to be a competant biblical scholar has endorced the book. The reality is that there is a difference between Catholic apologetics and Catholic scholarship. Most Catholic scholars believe in Mary's perpetual virginity. They are just honest enough to admit that the New Testament doesn't teach it. Catholic apologetics is just into making converts, and hence they have to either overlook or skirt evidence like this. If you read this book, you will see why Catholic scholars believe what they do about what the bible teaches concerning Mary's perpetual virginity.
